Vashendriya Vindhya Vasini Hira has received a Travel Award of the Histochemical Society to attend the FASEB meeting to be held in San Diego in April this year.

Vashendriya received her MSc in Biomedical Sciences from The University of Amsterdam in Prof. Ron van Noorden's laboratory, where she focused on understanding the similarities between hematopoietic stem cell niches in human bone marrow and glioma stem cell niches in human glioblastoma brain tumors.

She is currently enrolled in a PhD program at The University of Amsterdam and performs her PhD research project under supervision of Prof. Ron van Noorden at the Department of Medical Biology at the Cancer Center Amsterdam in The Netherlands.

Her research project entitled: "No more hide and seek for glioma stem cells in their protective niches", involves work on glioma stem cell (GSC) niches in human glioblastoma. GSCs are quiescent and therapy resistant in their protective niches and are held responsible for tumor recurrence. Therefore, the interactions between GSCs and their protective niches are important therapeutic targets. Disrupting the interactions between GSCs and their niches may render the GSCs sensitive to chemotherapy and irradiation. This may improve glioblastoma treatment and ultimately enhance the outlook and quality of life of glioblastoma patients.